234 MICROBES, FERMENTS, AND MOULDS. 
XV. Micropes or Pus; PyamiA AND SEPTICEMIA, 
Sores and surgical operations are often followed 
by a general poisoning of the blood and of the whole 
system—a severe affection which is rapidly fatal, and 
characterized by the presence of pus-corpuscles in con- 
siderable numbers in the blood and in the principal 
organs. Together with these pus-corpuscles there is 
always a special microbe, termed Micrococcus septicus, 
which, like that of diphtheria, may either appear free 
or in the form of chaplets (vibrio), or in the interior 
of the colourless corpuscles of pus, or embryonic cells, 
of which it effects the rupture in the form of zoogloea. 
This microbe, or others of 
allied species, are the im- 
mediate cause of that poison- 
ing of the blood which is 
termed pyzmia, septicemia, 
traumatic fever, puerperal 
fever, post-mortem wounds, 
Fig. 98.—Pus-corpuscles of puerperal - ete, The germs of Micro- 
peritonitis oj dian). '® coceus septicus are intro- 
duced into the blood, and 
multiply there, through the exposed surface of a wound, 
or sometimes by means of the instrument which caused 
it (Fig. 98). 
When the instrument causing the wound is charged 
with microbes, it is not necessary that the wound 
